Sura put a calming hand on his chest. ‘You are in no fit state for anything. Besides, Gratian is due to return to the West today, but he plans to leave his agents behind and some of his regiments.’
‘The Claudia men, we must warn them…’
‘The survivors of the Claudia have been recalled to Constantinople. But we can’t rejoin them,’ Sura’s head lolled and he mouthed a curse.
‘Sura?’
Sura looked up, his eyes glassy. ‘Gratian has put a man of his own in charge of the Claudia. He framed it as a gift, to replace you and me.’
Pavo’s stomach twisted, trying to comprehend what this might mean for his comrades. ‘By all the gods…’
‘You must remain a shade, Pavo, for now.’
‘And where does a shade live?’ he said, rising to sit on the ship’s rail.
Just then a huge shadow passed across them from behind, as if night was returning. Pavo twisted to look seawards: a liburnian had drawn up behind them under a gently billowing blue-striped sail. Oarsmen peered down upon the skiff, and a few men in legionary tunics looked down from the stern.
Pavo frowned.
Sura caught a knotted rope tossed down from the liburnian, handing it to Pavo. ‘Saturninus has arranged for us to travel to the eastern edges of the empire and beyond. A young general named Stilicho is engaged in talks with the Persian Shahanshah – to secure and extend the peace we helped instigate when we travelled to those parts once before. There we will be little more than shades. There we will be able to plan our way back… to face Gratian again.’
Pavo made to protest, eyes returning to the cliffs.
‘Come on,’ one of the marines on the liburnian called down. ‘We were told to be quick. The Western Emperor’s men are already asking why our boats are patrolling these waters.’
Pavo let go of a deep sigh then turned away from the land and to the knotted rope. With Sura lending a helping hand, he shinned his way up, wincing as his wounds protested, then clambered aboard. As Sura climbed up, he looked around the crew, the twelve marines and the lone officer in helm and silver cloak near the prow, back turned.
‘A massive sea voyage,’ Pavo muttered, his stomach already awakening from oblivion to sense the swell of the water. ‘Fantastic.’
Sura leapt aboard and threw a purse of coins down to the fishermen, then wrapped an arm across Pavo’s shoulders, draping a blanket around him. ‘Persia: and this time we’ll travel there on the official roads and rivers. To the Shahanshah’s palaces. Silks, wine, women…’ he said with a hopeful smile.
Pavo wrapped his chapped, scabbed fingers around the ship’s landward-facing rail and continued to stare at the cliffs as the liburnian headed south. He felt a heavy and unwelcome weight around his neck. Reaching up to feel it, he realised it was Gratian’s torque. Gripping the two ball ends at the front, he forced it open and tossed it into the water with a thick plonk.
Two of the fishermen plunged in to salvage the valuable piece for themselves.
‘We will return, when the time is right,’ Sura implored him.
Pavo stared at the Thracian coastline, thinking of the good people there, the ones who might help make a return possible: Saturninus and Eriulf. Modares and Bacurius too. Emperor Theodosius, if it suited him, could be an ally once again also. Then there was Merobaudes, young Valentinian and Justina in Gratian’s court.
He closed his eyes, seeing the crone staring back at him from the blackness there. The war is over, Pavo, you walked the hardest of roads as I knew you could.
‘And now?’ he whispered.
Her face fell. Now? Now comes the storm…
A short way south of Dionysopolis and at the base of the cliffs, a simple timber jetty stretched out into the calm waters and a handful of the Classis Moesica galleys lay anchored offshore. Three watchmen of Bacurius’ Scutarii riders stood on the jetty by their tethered mounts, watching the sea, drinking from their waterskins, heads still thick with wine from the previous night’s celebrations of the peace treaty. They had woken to a terrible caterwauling: Bishop Ambrosius of Mediolanum had staggered through the Roman camp at dawn, spreading news that his fellow pontiff, Ancholius, had been found within the ruins of Dionysopolis at dawn, hanged.
‘He was hanging many feet above the ground, and his head had been nearly torn off, so tight was the noose! How does an old cage of bones like Ancholius rope himself up like that?’ said one of the riders, his head wrapped in a bandage.
‘With the power of his God?’ another rumbled in dry laughter. He kissed his ancient amulet of Apollo and gazed up at the sun.
The three stared skywards, each wondering if the time was coming where they would have to hide their charms and symbols of the old ways.
‘Ah, look: they must have found Pavo,’ said the bandaged rider.
‘Alive too,’ gasped the third man, ‘given that the liburnian is heading south. General Saturninus will be pleased.’
‘Trierarchus Ripanus will see Pavo right. He’ll guide the boat all the way south, past Constantinople, across the Mare Aegaeum and the Mare Internum and round to the easternmost provinces. He’s a good bastard, is Ripanus.’
‘He… was… a good bastard,’ panted a fourth voice.
The other three looked down, seeing a pale-faced fourth comrade, bent-double, backing out from under the jetty, dragging something with a heavy scrape of disturbed shingle. All three blinked at the staring, blue-lipped corpse of Trierarchus Ripanus, and the gaping, brown gash that ran across his throat. Then all four of them looked up and out across the water, to the dawn-silhouetted liburnian, and to the silver-cloaked, helmed officer at the prow.
‘Then who,’ said the bandaged rider, ‘who in all the empire stands at the prow of that ship?’
The End
The Legionary series continues with ‘DARK EAGLE:
What hope has one forgotten soldier of bringing an emperor to justice?
Winter, 382 AD. The Gothic War is over. After years of bloodshed, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Goths have struck a deal for peace. Imperial heralds crow about the treaty as if it were a triumph. Feasts and celebrations take place across the Eastern provinces. Every hero of the war is honoured and acclaimed... except one.
Tribunus Pavo languishes in exile, haunted by a dark truth: that it was Gratian, Emperor of the West – the most powerful man alive – who caused the war and manipulated its every turn. Tormented by memories of loved ones lost during the great conflict, one word tolls endlessly through Pavo’s mind: Justice!
But in this great game of empire, justice rarely comes without a grave cost…
You can grab a full copy of ‘Legionary: Dark Eagle’ at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/957123
Or you can bag the whole series at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/2867
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
I knew when I set out to write this volume that peace would be the end result and so I toyed with naming it accordingly: ‘The Great Peace’ was the first codename. However, upon weaving together the historical and fictional twines you have just experienced, that quickly evolved into ‘The Crimson Peace’… and by the time I had penned the first draft it had become ‘The Blood Road’. I’m sure you’ll agree it is the most apt moniker. Here’s a little background into it all – the aforementioned historical bones and the fictional flesh.
The histories covering the final period of the Gothic War are fragmentary indeed, coming from the confused accounts of Zosimus, the hints of the orator Themistius, the attested movements of the Western and Eastern Emperors and other such patchy sources. The only certainty is that the Romans and the Goths were locked in a costly war that neither side could win. Worse, it seems that early in 381 AD, a band of Huns grew bored of the rich pickings north of the Danube, and found a way across the river to raid imperial lands. Fortunately, as per this book’s opening chapter, imperial forces in the region managed to drive this incursion off. It is likely that the scale o
f the invasion was larger than in my depiction. Don’t worry though, I’ve likely redressed the balance in later battles!
Not long after staving off the Huns, something rather unexpected occurred: on 11th January 381 AD, Athanaric the Goth arrived at the gates of Constantinople. Prior to the Gothic War, Athanaric was considered the most powerful of the Thervingi (amongst the many Gothic tribal groupings, the Thervingi were probably the largest). More, he was possibly the greatest external threat to the Roman East. But around the time of the coming of the Huns, he appears to have been knocked from his perch. Fritigern – his great rival – took his place and assumed the role of Iudex, uniting the Thervingi and various other Gothic factions en-masse to lead the migration over the Danube and into Roman Thracia. Athanaric chose to flee with his remaining followers and hide out from the Huns in the Carpathian Mountains. He became largely forgotten during the five years of the Gothic War which followed. So, when he turned up at Constantinople with no army and under a banner of peace, most Romans must have been shocked. This was some about-face for a baleful barbarian lord who had once sworn never to set foot inside the empire. Some speculate that Athanaric might have been chased from his Carpathian den by the Huns, or possibly by a younger Gothic rival, or that he might have been summoned to Constantinople by Emperor Theodosius in an effort to secure allegiance and imperial use of his remaining tribal forces. Others suggest this might have been Theodosius’ attempts to set an example to the other Gothic peoples that peace was possible. We do not know the background to his visit for certain, but we are told that he was suitably awestruck when he saw – for the first time – the capital’s walls.
‘I have now seen what I often had heard of, though I did not believe it,’ declared Athanaric at the sight of the palaces, the great public squares, the hippodrome, the shimmering churches, the immaculately drilled guards, the harbour choked with shipping and the throng of peoples of all nations. ‘Truly the emperor of Rome is a god on earth, and whoever lifts a hand against him is asking for death.’ (Theodosius: The Empire at Bay, Friel)
Emperor Theodosius met him in person outside the land gates, honouring him as a royal guest. Yet within two weeks, Athanaric’s ambitions – whatever they might have been – lay in tatters. He died on 25th January, and was awarded a splendorous, state-sponsored funeral and had a statue erected in his name. A great enemy of the empire arrives at the city gates and within a fortnight he is cold and dead? I could not help but ask the question ‘what if?’ here. Well, my answer to that question is Eriulf’s scheme – to sabotage Athanaric’s offer of tribal manpower to Theodosius.
So the war rumbled on, and rumours were rife that Emperor Gratian and his Western legions were on the march to tackle Fritigern and his ‘horde’. Fresh from a victory against the splinter forces of Alatheus and Saphrax at Sirmium the previous year, morale amongst the Western forces must have been high. Gratian completed the moving of his western capital from Trier to Milan and mustered his armies near Aquileia in northern Italy. With the Franks, Merobaudes and Arbogastes, serving as his high generals, he then marched them eastwards for the long talked-of salvation of the East.
In the meantime, Emperor Theodosius – presiding over a broken army and a frightened people – seems to have fostered an ever-greater Christian zeal. He was the first emperor in centuries to refuse the ancient title of Pontifex Maximus (Great Priest of the old gods). Then, deliberately ignoring Gratian’s orders to wait for his arrival, he went ahead and hosted the Ecumenical Council of 381 AD. It was probably there that Theodosius composed the edict prohibiting the old Roman religions. Anyone caught practicing haruspicy would be sentenced to death. He even instituted inquisitions to weed out those of ‘heretical’ faiths – Pagans, Arians (Christians who rejected the notion of the Nicene Trinity), Audians, Quartodecimans and Manichaeans. The Lancearii ‘Inquisitors’ I describe in this book are imagined, but it is a certainty that Theodosius would have employed hired muscle of some sort to see that his edicts were upheld and feared.
At some point in 381 AD, the Western legions arrived in the East. A bitter and drawn-out tussle with Fritigern’s Goths ensued throughout the rest of the year and for the majority of 382 AD. During this time, the horde was driven out of the Diocese of Macedonia and into the neighbouring Diocese of Thracia. In the complete absence of any battle detail from this period, I have invented the assault on Thessalonica both to excite and entertain and to illustrate the moment when things begin to turn against the previously mighty Gothic horde.
Fritigern cuts a rather sad figure in this volume, and is it any wonder? He had, for a short spell, installed the Goths as semi-peaceable masters of Thracia, collecting wheat as tax from previously imperial subjects. This was but a breath of calm and prosperity before the Western legions came. It seems that he slipped from history quietly during the struggle for supremacy of 381/382 AD, and certainly before it ended. It is most likely that he was despatched by rival Goths. Peter Heather speculates that such a demise might even have been engineered by the Romans, who could have incented those rivals. In my take, Eriulf was the one offering the incentive to the murderers – and certainly not to aid the interests of the empire!
The next firm attestation of events we have is that, by autumn of 382 AD, the Western forces had gained a firm upper hand, pinning the Goths somewhere in Thracia. I used my knowledge of the region to speculate that this might have been at the precipitous coastline of Dionysopolis, by the Black Sea (where a worn statue of the eponymous god is said to have projected from the waters during that time period). The fraught battle there is again imagined, but a final struggle seems highly plausible although perhaps not on the scale I have described in the cliff battle. Most importantly, we know for certain that on the 3rd October 382 AD, the Gothic War ended when a peace deal was struck.
We have only sketchy details of the discussions. It seems that Saturninus and Richomeres were there on the Roman side. There is no record of a named leader speaking for the Goths. Indeed, the title ‘Iudex’ was never again used (hence my depiction of the burial of Fritigern’s helm). However, we know of two prominent Goths who would go on to become rather famous in future years: Alaric and Fravitta. Given Alaric’s tender years, it is unlikely to have been him. Fravitta would go on to display a very pro-Roman attitude in the years to follow (much to the chagrin of the historical Eriulf) so it seems more plausible that he could have been the man negotiating for the Goths.
The exact nature of the peace deal is a highly-contentious matter. There are two broad camps in the debate. Some historians, such as Halsall and Wyman, claim that the peace deal came in the form of a ‘coloni’ arrangement – i.e. a full surrender of the Goths, who went on to become fully integrated Roman citizens, paying taxes and serving in the legions as regular soldiers. Other historians such as Heather, MacDowall and Friel, insist that the peace deal took the form of a ‘foedus’ – i.e. a treaty between equals. In this arrangement, the Goths were not full imperial subjects, and were exempt from taxes. Their only obligation was to muster for war when the Roman Emperor called upon them, but not as legions: instead, they would march with their own tribal generals, retaining their own military traditions. More, they were granted Roman lands to farm as their own. If true, this was a watershed moment – the first time in the empire’s history that it had settled an entire people within its borders and allowed them almost complete autonomy. This second theory is certainly more compelling from the storyteller’s point of view, but that alone is not what guided me to favour this option. Surely the empire – having suffered defeat after defeat to the horde since the Battle of Adrianople – would have been relieved to agree peace even at a high cost? The 4th century AD Bishop Synesius writes that the post-382 AD Goths settled in Thracia were brought up differently, in an un-Roman fashion. Pacatus, the Latin panegyrist, describes how the Goths were mobilised en-masse as opposed to being stationed in barracks like regular legions. Heather explains how Gothic bands were attested as serving in subsequent campaig
ns, but were not listed in the Notitia Dignitatum (a collection of sources detailing the imperial regiments of the later 4th century AD), which further suggests they were mustered and disbanded as and when needed when the emperor called upon them. Halsall – firmly in the ‘coloni’ camp – even concedes that there were strange irregularities about the Gothic terms and how they might not have been required to pay taxes in the normal way. Whether you agree with my take on this matter or not, what is indisputable is that the Goths settled under this peace deal retained enough of their identity and culture to become, over time, the Visigoths. In the coming centuries they, and their close kin, the Ostrogoths, would carve out their own true empire upon Roman soil. But that is another tale.
Regarding a few minor characters: Vitalianus was one of Gratian’s generals. His secret life as Optio Speculatorum is imagined, but he certainly would have been one of the Western Emperor’s closest aides. While Bishop Ancholius died in 382 AD, there is no record of foul play or that Bishop Ambrosius had anything to do with it. Reiks Winguric was indeed a notorious Gothic warlord, infamous for locking Gothic families in a church and burning the building to the ground in 375 AD. Concerning the city of Marcianople: this Roman settlement never actually fell to the Goths as I first depicted in Legionary: Viper of the North and again in this volume, but I felt that briefly revisiting its ruined streets and seeing the skeleton of the loathsome Lupicinus served as a poignant reminder of how long and destructive the war had been for Roman and Goth alike.
But the war is over! Peace has broken out across Thracia, yet it is merely the eye of a burgeoning storm. Pavo’s story thunders on towards Persia. The fires of vengeance and injustice burn brightly, and the Claudia – now back in Constantinople but led by one of Gratian’s men – need him. The question is: will it ever be safe for him to return to imperial lands? And what dangers travel with him to Persia?
The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7 Page 34
